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I see @xkcd.com got ahold of my to do list: xkcd.com/3278 (Adding to my status as 'Most Distracted Astronomer', I'm actually working on a surprising number of these) 🔭

Vera Rubin Observatoryxkcd.com

Two ducks appeared in our offices @oxfordphysics.bsky.social a few months ago. Controversially, they have the Cambridge logo on their hats.

Short-sighted, stupid cuts to the UKRI budget include shutting down Jodrell Bank, the icon of British astronomy. (Many other cuts too, including 20% to our brand new @vrubinobs.bsky.social). Interesting politically to shut down a major facility in...um..Manchester 🔭 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Jodrell Bank's Lovell telescope faces axe in science cuts, BBC understandsAstronomers warn it would tear the heart out of UK science, and leave a generation untrained.www.bbc.co.uk

Bloody hell.

'You can't build an anomaly detector...this is a very childish idea' says Shrinivas Kulkarni at #NAM2026. So much for those of us working in the field, then. 🔭

Small hills I will die on: the @royalastrosoc.bsky.social is ‘the R. A. S.’ not ‘the raz’.

Struggling to understand the geophysics plenary at #NAM2026

So the ‘this is confusing’ camp (mostly exoplanet people) seem to think (some) brown dwarfs are not stars, but they are also not planets. It’s not an attitude I think has spread (yet) to the rest of astro, so I guess we’re in another confusing nomenclature melange.

I find myself confused here. The new object is in orbit around a star. It’s a planet, not a moon. The fact that that star is in orbit around another star seems neither here nor there. 🔭

I knew the National Astronomy Meeting football tournament was taken seriously, but I think last year's winners bringing the cup into science sessions is a new level of prominence #NAM2026. 🔭

‘Metal trends in dwarf galactic fashion’ by Alessandro Angrilli, the first in an irregular series: poster titles that conjure up different images of you don’t work in the field. 🔭 #NAM2026

Lovely plenary talk on HiPERCAM - high speed imaging - by Sheffield's Vik Dhillon, covering everything from rings around Quaoar in the outer Solar System to binary neutron stars. #NAM2026 🔭

Early start for one of two days popping into #NAM2026 for me today, the UK astronomy community's annual conference and shindig. Hosted in beautiful Birmingham. Looking forward to galactic chemistry, a decade of grav waves, possibly some metascience and an excellent dinner with friends.

Good thread from the Brilliant Birkby on the new planet discovery.